The Miracle of Crystal Pistol
I came across an old photograph the other day. It is me, forty years ago, on my first Arabian horse. His name was Crystal Pistol.
I bought him from a gentleman out of Texas, a good rider, and Crystal Pistol came to me already knowing what a good rider felt like. I had to grow into him. He was not a light-leg horse. He wanted a firmer cue, a clearer conversation, and he taught me how to really ride — not just sit a horse, but ride one.
He was such a good horse. And I think this is why people love Arabians. A lot of us, it turns out, had an Arabian as our first horse. They are spirited, but in different degrees. Crystal Pistol was not as spirited as the mare I have now, Jahnaah. She is her own kind of fire. But both of them share what I believe Arabians carry above and beyond most horses — that bonding with a human. If they could talk, they would.
The frisbee game
One thing I remember most about Crystal Pistol was from the summer I took him up to my place in Tahoe. He was in a smaller pen than he was used to, and his grain was kept in a big tub with a heavy lid. He figured out how to work the lid off the top, and then he would fling it like a frisbee. That lid was not small. It took real effort. But when he wanted to be fed, he would fling his head, and I would see him out there sailing the lid across the pen, and I would throw it back to him, and he would throw it back to me.
I have never before or since seen a horse play frisbee. He did.
The angel on the highway
Our place at Tahoe was on the lake, in a spot that felt rare and quiet, with a long driveway that wound through the pines. Every evening in the summer I would walk Crystal Pistol up and down that driveway with a halter and a lead rope. It was our routine — the sun going down, the temperature falling, the pines going still.
One evening my husband at the time walked with us. He was a horse person himself, and he knew how deeply Crystal Pistol bonded. He said, “You don’t need the lead rope. Just take it off. He’ll walk with us.”
That lasted about ten minutes.
Then Crystal Pistol decided he had somewhere else to be. Away he went, down the driveway and toward the highway that winds along Lake Tahoe. I called and called. He did not come back. It was getting dark. He did not come back.
I went to the house and called the sheriff. I told them I had a gray Arabian with a halter on, and where our property was along the lake, and please, please look out for him. They said they would do the best they could.
That highway is busy and windy, and people drive it fast. I had a horse show in Scottsdale in two weeks. But that was not what my heart was on. My heart was on him, out there in the dark, and there was nothing I could do but pray. That is such a strange place to be — the thing you love is gone, in a dangerous place, and you are completely helpless. It is beyond helpless. It is a kind of emptiness I hope not to feel again.
Around eleven that night, the sheriff called. A man had been driving down the highway, seen a gray Arabian, and — because he happened to be a horseman himself, with a rope and a horse trailer — had lassoed Crystal Pistol, loaded him up, and called it in. They arranged the location, and the man drove Crystal Pistol back to our property himself.
My knees buckled when I got the news.
Crystal Pistol was unharmed. Not a scratch. The man would not take any money. He just said he was glad he could get him, that it was fine, and that he needed to get going now. And then he was gone, down the road, like he had never been there.
If that was not a miracle, I do not know what is. I have always believed that man was an angel. Who else happens along a dark highway at exactly the right moment, with exactly the right equipment, and exactly the right skill, and then vanishes and will not take a dollar for it? That night pushed me right out to the edge of what I could feel, and then brought me back.
The dream, forty years later
I hadn’t thought about Crystal Pistol in a long, long time. He has been in horse heaven for many years now.
But the other night I had a very vivid dream.
In the dream, I was with a group of people who claimed they could deliver miracles. They had gathered everyone in a hotel meeting room. One by one, people were handed a microphone and asked, “What is your wish? What is the miracle you would want?” And as each person spoke, their miracle would appear right there in front of them, and someone would take a photograph in that candid moment when it arrived.
The couple hosting it was older, married, humble, quiet. They were not loud or theatrical. They simply knew what they could do, and they did not say much about it.
When it was my turn, I got up with the microphone. I talked and talked, waiting for the miracle to happen, wondering when it would come. The couple just smiled at me, patient.
Then I looked down the aisle, and there was Crystal Pistol. Some people were walking him toward me.
I said, “Oh my goodness.” And I ran to him and hugged him like I could not believe it. I was in shock. I was in awe. It felt like the most awesome thing — they really had delivered a miracle. I got to see Crystal Pistol again. He was alive again.
I turned to the old gentleman and asked, “How did you do this?”
He just smiled. He did not answer. He was simply happy that I was happy.
Miracles, then and now
Horses have always been tied up with miracles in my life. The angel on the highway. The dream that brought him back down the aisle. And now Amir.
I have had a lot of horses in the forty years since Crystal Pistol. Each one has left something in me. But the horse I have now, Amir, feels like his own kind of miracle — a gift I did not go looking for, given at a moment in my life when I needed him.
Maybe that is what the dream was really telling me. The miracle is not that the horse comes back. The miracle is that the love never actually left, and that every good horse after was another quiet delivery from the same patient hand.
Crystal Pistol taught me to ride.
Amir is teaching me the rest.
